Disciplines Film & Media Studies Documentary Film

Mining the Home Movie by Karen I. Ishizuka, Patricia R. Zimmermann

Mining the Home Movie Excavations in Histories and Memories

by Karen I. Ishizuka (Editor), Patricia R. Zimmermann (Editor)
December 2007
First Edition
Paperback
$34.95, £30.00 eBook
$34.95, £30.00
Title Details

Rights: Available worldwide
Pages: 360
ISBN: 9780520248076
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 78 b/w photographs

About the Book About the Author Reviews Table of Contents Related Books

About the Book

The first international anthology to explore the historical significance of amateur film, Mining the Home Movie makes visible, through image and analysis, the hidden yet ubiquitous world of home moviemaking. These essays boldly combine primary research, archival collections, critical analyses, filmmakers' own stories, and new theoretical approaches regarding the meaning and value of amateur and archival films. Editors Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann have fashioned a groundbreaking volume that identifies home movies as vital methods of visually preserving history. The essays cover an enormous range of subject matter, defining an important genre of film studies and establishing the home movie as an invaluable tool for extracting historical and social insights.

About the Author

Karen L. Ishizuka is an independent writer, curator, and documentary producer and is the author of Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration (2006). Patricia R. Zimmerman is Professor of Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College. She is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (1995) and States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies (2000).

Reviews

“Ishizuka’s work allows us to see a multi-hued and multifaceted history that serves as a bulwark against those who would gloss over or forget its many nuances.”—Asian Week

“This is a fascinating, informative resource for those interested in the history of film, documentary film in particular. . . . Highly recommended.”—A. F. Winestead Choice

“Groundbreaking essays intrigue with descriptions of films that you may never see but wish you could.”—Robert Ito Los Angeles Magazine

"By claiming home movies as essential tools of historiography, Ishizuka and Zimmerman manage to break down artificial barriers between public histories and private records. In this groundbreaking volume, their selection of visionary essays offers a way to reclaim devalued work and turn the tables on the cataloguers. Absolutely required reading for historians, curators and media analysts."—B. Ruby Rich, author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Home Movie Movement: Excavations, Artifacts, Minings—Patricia R. Zimmermann
1. Remaking Home Movies—Richard Fung
2. The Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution—John Homiak and Pamela Wintle
3. Wittgenstein Tractatus: Personal Reflections on Home Movies—Péter Forgács
4. La Filmoteca de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México—Iván Trujillo
5. Ordinary Film: Péter Forgács’s The Maelstrom—Michael S. Roth
6. The Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive—Kay Gladstone
7. 90 Miles: The Politics and Aesthetics of Personal Documentary—Amy Villarejo
8. The Florida Moving Image Archive—Steven Davidson
9. Something Strong Within: A Visual Essay—Karen L. Ishizuka and Robert A. Nakamura
10. Something Strong Within as Historical Memory—Robert Rosen
11. The Moving Image Archive of the Japanese American National Museum—Karen L. Ishizuka
12. The Home Movie and the National Film Registry: The Story of Topaz—Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann
13. The Nederlands Archive/Museum Institute—Nico de Klerk
14. Home Away from Home: Private Films from the Dutch East Indies—Nico de Klerk
15. The Library of Congress—Brian Taves
16. Deteriorating Memories: Blurring Fact and Fiction in Home Movies in India—Ayisha Abraham
17. The Movie Queen: Northeast Historic Film—Karan Sheldon and Dwight Swanson
18. The WPA Film Library—Carolyn Faber
19. Mule Racing in the Mississippi Delta—Karen Glynn
20. The Academy Film Archive—Lynne Kirste
21. “As If by Magic”: Authority, Aesthetics, and Visions of the Workplace in Home Movies, circa 1931–1949—Heather Norris Nicholson
22. The New Zealand Film Archive/Nga Kaitiaki o Nga Taonga Whitiahua—Virginia Callanan
23. Working People, Topical Films, and Home Movies: The Case of the North West Film Archive—Maryann Gomes
24. The Oregon State Historical Society’s Moving Image Archives—Michele Kribs
25. Reflections on the Family Home Movie as Document: A Semio-Pragmatic Approach—Roger Odin
26. The Stephen Lighthill Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive—Ross Lipman
27. Morphing History into Histories: From Amateur Film to the Archive of the Future—Patricia R. Zimmermann